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Re: Vinegar

yes we make a lot of vinegars. Any beer or wine that we are not completely satisfied with goes into cheese cloth covered gallon jars with a slug of mother. we have also made it out of commercial wines that get opened and forgotten long enough to oxidize. My brew club bought a bourbon barrel and we all made 5 gallon batches of stout. We left in in the barrel for 6 - 8 months and the results was wonderful. so good that we wanted to try again. Problem was it took a couple of weeks to get beer in it again. in that time the barrel got infected and the second batch was terrible. Most of the members just dumped theres but my wife and I took it home, boiled it first to kill anything living in it and added mother. The following brew club Xmas party she gave everyone a bottle of stout vinegar. We started by just buying a bottle of vinegar from the health food store that had mother sitting on the bottom. For those that don't know what mother is it looks like snot. Every batch you make the mother grows. Now we actually give small bottles of mother to friends to get them started. I rack 5 gallons of hard cider into a secondary yesterday and sampled it. Its abit to hard for my taste so unless things change in the secondary I see apple cider vinegar in gift baskets next year. We have also made Champagne vinegar that really turned out great. We bought cheap champagne, popped the corks and left it sit and go flat. Poured it into gallon jars, added mother and walked away for afew months

Re: Vinegar

Originally Posted by DPBsbees

Dan, What mother do you use for honey vinegar?

The first batch I ever started, I added a jar of Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar. Since that time, I harvest two thirds and leave one third to inoculate the next batch. I will say I’m less interested in using the actual mother and believe that using vinegar with an active population of acetobacter to initiate the next round is effective. My new batches will have a significant mother forming within a few weeks. .

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. - Emerson

Re: Vinegar

Ok all you vinegar brewers I started some apple cider vinegar. I used apple peeling,and cores left from apple pie making. I put into a crock, covered them with water, and added a glob of mother. I stir it everyday. It first started to smell like beer, then wine now more like vinegar. If and when should I remove the peelings and cores? When I do remove them should I keep the mother blob in there or remove it and let it make it's own? When do I put it into bottles? Thank you for any help I can get.

Re: Vinegar

Originally Posted by Homemaid

Ok all you vinegar brewers I started some apple cider vinegar. I used apple peeling,and cores left from apple pie making. I put into a crock, covered them with water, and added a glob of mother. I stir it everyday. It first started to smell like beer, then wine now more like vinegar. If and when should I remove the peelings and cores? When I do remove them should I keep the mother blob in there or remove it and let it make it's own? When do I put it into bottles? Thank you for any help I can get.

Sorry but this is the wrong way to make vinegar. You first need a alcohol fermentation. Peels and cores mixed with water will not provide enough sugar to make enough alcohol. I would expect it just to mold. Pressed apple cider will ferment out to about 5%. This is without adding any water. You can let wild yeasts ferment the cider but I preferr to kill the wild and add a wine or beer yeast in a starter. Bread yeast is not recomended. After a couple of weeks of alcohol fermentation you can add the mother and start the acetic acid fermentation. This needs darkness, near 70deg and oxygen.

Re: Vinegar

Originally Posted by Homemaid

Should I jst toss it and start over?

Your whole process seems random....I can't even guess what you presently have. I would be reluctant to consume it....but I know folks who do worse.
I wouldn't 'start over' without doing a bit of research on the process....otherwise you'll end up pretty much where you currently are.
Good luck.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. - Emerson

Re: Vinegar

Re: Vinegar

Homemaid
Its not difficult! If you want to give it another try buy the alcohol in the form of maybe redwine or beer. Buy a six pack of a dark beer like a stout. Open them and let sit around a few days to get flat. Pour them into a glass or stainless container and add the mother. Then cover with cheese cloth. stir them now and then. Don't try buying cider without reading the label. Unless you are getting it from the guy that made it, it will haves sorbate in it and will not ferment to give you the alcohol needed

Re: Vinegar

Beemandan, can you give more advice on how you make your vinegars.
Do you make your own mead?
Isn't the Orleans method were you put a funnel in the top, with a tube going below the mother? Have you tried this method?
How do you know when to start testing for acidity, and how do you test?
I just started my first mother in a quart jar, with red wine and a commercial bought mother. I have a 10 liter oak vinegar barrel that I want to make the vinegar in. I want to try red wine before I jump on mead.
I'm reading vinegar by Diggs (The Vinegar Man) right know, but I still find it easier to ask specific questions.
I have 100 more.

Re: Vinegar

Originally Posted by sfisher

Beemandan, can you give more advice on how you make your vinegars.

The idea of adding some mechanism allowing me to remove vinegar and add back the makings of a new batch….all without disturbing the mother as is done in the Orleans method…..seems to me to be a bit too much. In fact, sunken mothers aren’t uncommon even in untouched containers. So I just don’t worry about saving them.

Trying to make vinegar from traditional meads or wines with alcohol contents over ten percent have proven difficult to me. In an earlier post I cited two links. The second has pretty much everything one would need to know to start a good quality honey vinegar. The biggest issue with that document is that the author is talking about making larger batches than I typically make. So…if you read the article, you should be able to adjust the information to suit whatever size you plan to make. Maybe the most important piece of information in it is the suggestion that you start with a honey/water mix that has about an 8% potential alcohol content. If fermented to completion, then inoculated with a colony of acetobacters, mine typically result in vinegar with an acid content of 6.5 to 7.5%.

I usually test my vinegars at around 11 months. This is the part overlooked in most books on the subject. While child’s’ play for those with a chemistry background, for me it required dredging up forty year old college chemistry and a bit of present day research. I draw a sample, sinking the mother in the process, and titrate it with NaOH and an indicator solution. With the right tools (including a precision scale) and a bit of old fashioned algebra you can compute the percent acid. I will move the vinegar into another breathable container and after about four weeks, if it begins forming a mother, I’ll let it run a bit longer. If it doesn’t, I’ll retest the acidity and if I get the same basic result as I did earlier, I trust that it has completed its acidification. At that point I dilute with distilled water and retest to achieve a 5% acid vinegar.

Or, if you don’t plan to sell it and start with an 8% potential alcohol must and allow it to ferment to completion and convert the alcohol totally…you should have a high enough acid to be safe….although above 6.5% they have a real bite.
.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. - Emerson